Set the Tone for YOUR Military Family

One of our traditions is to sit down and write a family plan to tackle the upcoming year together. We list it on a large piece of paper and post it somewhere in our home. This helps us to stay focused as a family and keep each other accountable.

There’s nothing like having the support of your home team! While we all have our personal goals, the ones we can tackle as a family can be broken up into these areas:

Family Time
Life gets so jumbled up sometimes! Things can slip through the cracks so easily and before you know it, it’s been a month and you’ve been running so FULL SPEED AHEAD with your daily duties that you haven’t looked each other in the face good and said “How are you doing, really?” You haven’t sat down with your kids and just let them talk about… whatever, and really paid attention to them.Our solution to this was to dedicate SATURDAY’S to family only. No work, no other obligations. Just the FAM. Things came up here and there, but it really changed the game for us and the kids.

FinancialPlansIf you don’t run your money it will run away from you. It can happen before you’ve realized it. So here is where we decide what we will put it towards and how we will budget. Some bills will always be there (like utilities), but deciding to pay off debt is a big one. The next is the amount that will be saved. Sounds good right? Yea, that’s not good enough. We also have to choose HOW we will budget monthly to make sure this gets done!

Chores
Ok… if you have kids then you know how easy it is to keep a neat house, NOT! What we try and do is create a schedule for how often we will deep clean and who is responsible for what, so that everything doesn’t fall on mom. This doesn’t always work out as planned but we’ve gotten a little better at it as time goes by.

Decide on Marriage “GROWS” (NOT goals)This typically starts with questions. It’s a good opportunity as well to access how we’ve grown and what areas we can do better in. We plan dates and how often we should spend time together. And the best and toughest part is asking…”How’s your LOVE tank?” This is a reference from the book The 5 Love Languages. This question plainly put is asking your spouse “What do you need from me and how am I doing at loving you the way that’s meaningful to you?!”

Share our PERSONAL desiresWho we are individually is a constant evolution. We make it a point to not only write down and discuss what we want to accomplish personally, but we also ask how we can help each other achieve those goals. From here we make a plan together. This is really important because it’s another level of communication, trust and support. You allow your spouse to give their input and insight into your dreams and you hold each other accountable.

Example: Sometimes I cringe when hubby asks “how the workout plan” is going. My thoughts are usually “UGH, leave me alone!” But he’s just checking in on my progress, which I SAID I wanted him to do.

I’ve addressed SOME of the things that we plan out for our year to kick start us in the right/same direction. I’m sure you could have your own version of this list! However you decide to set the tone for your family, focus on what matters most to all of you and get on the same page!